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Opinion: What Looms For Defense Contractorsâ€™ Strategic Plans

Defense contractors with fiscal years that end in December will pull together their detailed strategic plans this autumn, and these plans will inform the financial guidance that is provided to shareholders and analysts. This autumn, planners will need to navigate through a set of uncertainties that did not look very probable a year ago—when the central issue was the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
The default position for planners may be that the world is a more ...

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I seriously doubt it that a defense spending will remain at these level let alone rise in 2019-2023 time frame. The next President will probably be a progressive Democrat since we gave a chance to a lunatic white supremacist right wing Republican. Only fair outcome is that a Bernie Sanders kind of President is next in line. And if (or when) that happens, then you'll probably see a major defense cuts and shrinking of our military. And I think MAJOR, maybe a 30-40% cut in a defense budget, slashing our foreign military footprint substantially. Of course maybe the seriousness of threat in the world changes these numbers even if will have a progressive President but I doubt it. It's the first thing he'll want to dismantle - a US military industrial complex, a thorn in the liberal's heel for over 5 decades. Of course, the next President may be an establishment kind of Democrat, something like Hillary was, and we start to pour even more money into military, considering the N Korea and Putin.. It's hard to tell but I think that large defense companies should for the first time in the history count on a 180 turn in US foreign policy and that should worry them. Either these defense giants start to develop and manufacture products on time and on budget or some of them will call on chapter 5 and shut their doors for good. Hey, but there's always a chance that a little piglet from N Korea sends "fire and fury" towards CONUS and we double our defense expenditure.. Right??

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